California is dying

KevinLewis inquires: "Does it make sense to draw any kind of overall, general conclusion based on a single data point?"

Pr'bly not; which may be why poor old DonDiego did not draw conclusions.

Nonetheless, State populations do affect such things as, f'rinstance, US Congressional Representation:

From Brookings: Census 2020 :

"On the basis of the 2020 census, only seven seats will change states—the smallest number in recent history.  All of the states gaining seats are in the South and West: Texas (which is gaining two seats), Florida, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, and North Carolina.

Five of the states losing seats are located in the Midwest and Northeast: Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania.  The other two states losing seats are West Virginia and California. 

Oh well, . . . at least it's a start.

I don't think it was the pandemic so much.

I think the US became VERY unfriendly to foreigners, including the well-educated brilliant immigrants like those who founded California companies such as Google, Tesla, Paypal, Yahoo, eBay, Intuit, Broadcom, Intel, SpaceX, and Uber. California is a preferred destination for many immigrants because of its superior universities, and its well-educated, rational, open-minded citizens.

And of course under Trump, the Ph.D. Arab named عبد الفتاح الجندلي who fathered Steve Jobs would have probably not emigrated to the US.

Sadly, under-educated and lower-income Americans get displaced in the process and have to move from California to vastly inferior places like Texas, Tennessee, or, god forbid, Minnesota. But that's progress!

I view that as a net positive. Smart people don't want to live with dumb people, and vice versa. Thus, creating smart (liberal) states and dumb (conservative) states (a process that is well underway, as shown by recent voting) will maximize American happiness. California, New York, etc. will be high-tech, prosperous, educated, and innovative. Kentucky, Kansas, etc. will be backward, poor, ignorant, and dumb as a box of rocks. So everyone will have their own particular place to go, as the song says.

As far as immigrants are concerned, maybe the reason that Trumpers get so exercised about them is that only the dumb ones go to states like Texas. Thus, the Trumpers only see the worst of the bunch.

To build on your point, it could also be that people whose mental capacities were always marginal at best for earning a living found it no longer possible to manage in a high cost of living state like California once the economy slowed down. They also found out that Trump-licking, while enjoyable, didn't put food on the table (and it won't in Arkansas, either, but the tarpaper shacks are cheaper there).